It is an idea disseminated in the 1960s in Japan that medication may be packaged in dosages and delivered to patients. This idea has been put into practical use mainly as packaging machines for powdered medicines. Tablet machines were developed in 1970s, and ampoule dispensing machines were developed in 1990s. These machines have been used in different ways according to their respective proper applications.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,604,692 discloses an apparatus in which a plurality of preparation stations classified according to the type of medication are arranged along a conveyor line and in which medicaments prepared at the individual preparation stations are collected to a checking station by the conveyor line. This apparatus prepares medicaments for the time period described in the prescription and delivers the medicaments to the patient.
In recent years, there has been developed an idea that medicaments prescribed to one patient are all collected regardless of the type of medicament and provided to the patient. This idea has been put into U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/021864, the assignee of which is the same as one of the assignees of the present application.
In America, medicaments for one-day doses to be administered to inpatients are a packaged box in the dispensary, and the box is stored in a movable medication storage cabinet, for example, MEDSTATION marketed by Pyxis Co. With the medication storage cabinet provided in the nurse station, when the medicament administration time comes, medicaments are taken out from the medication storage cabinet and administered to patients. Upon completion of the medicament administration for one-day doses, the medication storage cabinet is returned to the dispensary medication storage cabinet in which medicaments for the next day have been stored is then moved to the nurse station. By adopting such a system, clear histories of administration to the patients can be obtained, allowing accounting, medicament inventory management and the like to be carried out collectively.
However, medicaments, particularly tablets, for one-day doses are packaged in the form of a continuous package belt. The package belt comprises a medication package portion in which one dose of tablet is packed, a print portion in which patient information, medicament information, dosage information and the like are printed, and an empty package portion which is inserted between different patients. This package belt arrangement necessitates troublesome work such as separating off medication packages for each patient or for each dose, or cutting off empty packages. In particular, in the case of, for example, medicaments to be ordered in operation rooms, CPUs, or emergency departments, it is desired that such work as the separation of medication packages and the cutoff of empty packages be achieved promptly for subsequent delivery of the medicaments.